Thomas Jefferson Quotes

994 Sourced Quotes

What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government.

Thomas Jefferson
Besides the comfort of knowlege, every science is auxiliary to every other.

Thomas Jefferson
Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.

Thomas Jefferson
The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself.

Thomas Jefferson
My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Thomas Jefferson
I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.

Thomas Jefferson
Having defended the standard of liberty in this new world, having taught a lesson useful to those who inflict and to those who feel oppression you retire from the great theatre of action with the blessings of your fellow citizens.

Thomas Jefferson
You have not been mistaken in supposing my views and feeling to be in favor of the abolition of war. Of my dispos[i]tion to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself, the world has had proofs, and more, perhaps, than it has approved. I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the dispos[i]tion to war; but of its abolition I despair.

Thomas Jefferson
And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Thomas Jefferson
When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity of thought.

Thomas Jefferson
And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies.

Thomas Jefferson
When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to it, meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil; while fretting and fuming only serves to increase your own torments.

Thomas Jefferson
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Thomas Jefferson
The sway of the clergy in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself.

Thomas Jefferson
The cement of this union is in the heart blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis.

Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.

Thomas Jefferson
If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.

Thomas Jefferson
I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.... We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another.... The earth belongs always to the living generations.

Thomas Jefferson
In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.

Thomas Jefferson
To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the point at which are to commence the higher branches of education.... To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order.

Thomas Jefferson
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

Thomas Jefferson
My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal.

Thomas Jefferson
Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons.

Thomas Jefferson
In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

Thomas Jefferson
I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Thomas Jefferson
Yours of July 27 is received. It confirms the accounts we receive from others that the infractions of the embargo in Maine and Massachusetts are open. I have removed Pope, of New Bedford, for worse than negligence. The collector of Sullivan is on the totter. The Tories of Boston openly threaten insurrection if their importation of flour is stopped. The next post will stop it. I fear your Governor [Sullivan] is not up to the tone of these parricides, and I hope on the first symptom of an open opposition of the law by force you will fly to the scene, and aid in suppressing any commotion.

Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Thomas Jefferson
We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities.

Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

Thomas Jefferson